1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the fields of computer software and networking and, more particularly, to a technique through which programmatic actions can be performed based upon vehicle approximate locations.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many applications exist that would benefit from knowing an approximate location of a vehicle and being able to trigger a programmatic action to occur within the vehicle based upon this approximate location or being able to take a programmatic action based upon the approximate location. Applications that would benefit from vehicle proximate location information include a vast variety of applications, such as push advertising, vehicle tracking, traffic mapping, vehicle navigation, and the like.
For example, a gas station application may want to present a “coupon” to a customer low on gas when that customer is approaching an associated gas station. In such an example, an in-vehicle programmatic action of informing the vehicle driver of the “coupon” can be executed. Further, an extra vehicle programmatic action can also be executed that causes the gas station to automatically apply the coupon when the targeted vehicle pays for fuel at a pump.
Despite the potential benefits of communicating data between vehicles and remotely located applications, conventional technologies have failed to overcome difficulties associated with remote applications communicating with vehicles. One technical difficulty relates to communications between several mobile vehicles and several remote applications hosted at a fixed location. While wireless communications are possible with a vehicle using methodologies such as those used for mobile telephony and vehicle GPS, these methodologies generally require either a constant communication connection or periodic status polling/status response messages to be conveyed between each vehicle and each remote application. Such communication methodologies are designed for point-to-point information exchanges and do not provide easily scalable solutions capable of being ported to vehicle/application communications. That is, when the number of remote applications and the number of vehicles grow, communications complexity and cost can grow geometrically. What is needed is a scalable, cost efficient, and secure technology for permitting applications to communicate with vehicles, resulting in context dependent programmatic actions that are based in part upon vehicle location.